Vibration atomic layer deposition for conformal nanoparticle coating

A vibration atomic layer deposition reactor was developed for fabricating a conformal thin-film coating on nanosize particles. In this study, atomic layer deposition of 10-15-nm-thick Al₂O₃ films was conducted on a high-surface-area acetylene black powder with particle diameters of 200-250 nm. Intense vibration during the deposition resulted in the effective separation of particles, overcoming the interparticle agglomeration force and enabling effective diffusion of the precursor into the powder chunk; this phenomenon led to the formation of a conformal film coating on the nanopowder particles. It was also confirmed that the atomic layer deposition Al₂O₃ films initially grew on the high-surface-area acetylene black powder particles as discrete islands, presumably because chemisorption of the precursor and water occurred only on a few sites on the high-surface-area acetylene black powder surface. Relatively sluggish growth of the films during the initial atomic layer deposition cycles was identified from composition analysis.